Posted
by
Unknown Lameron Wednesday October 17, 2012 @10:31AM
from the server-pr0n dept.

For anyone curious about how Google's data centers look on the insidie, NMajik writes with word that Google published a photo tour of their secretive data centers. They look like the future, with a soft blue glow and color-coordinated cooling pipes.

Google is selling services and access to those server factories.
They need to advertise them to common folks.
This is why the tubes had to be instilled, becasue the Internet is obviously connected by tubes.

Nuh-uh. Wrong. There are no search servers there at all. All those hundreds of millions searches amongst hundreds of millions pages, mail, maps, docs and all that stuff is actually served by this guy [xkcd.com].

All the servers in that datacenter are marked "Do (no) evil #nnnn" and store whole history of your (and everybody else's) life indexed for Larry's and Sergei's (and FBI's and KGB's and...) perusal.

It's actually quite the opposite. Ads are pretty easy to serve, but indexing and searching the entire internet in milliseconds is incredibly resource-intensive. The amount of data is orders of magnitude higher when you're dealing with that kind of data.

On top of that, there's GMail, Docs, Maps, Play, etc. etc. which all require lots of resources.

LOL noobs. Four IBM 3370 bolted together side by side sounds just about right for a late 70s mainframe installation. Not too big, not too small.

Probably the OP is confusing his dates. A single 3380 DASD unit stores well over two gigs, but it wasn't released until June of 1980. OP was probably still wearing disco pants and gazing at lava lamps, early 1980 is "close enough" to the 70s.

I drive by this one occasionally. The only thing you see from the road is the cooling towers. It's interesting to finally read about part of it's function:

>> "This massive antenna receives signals for our Access Services unit which brings fiber optics to residential homes all over the globe. These antennas are also the primary signal source for hundreds of TV channels that make up Google Fiber's TV service."

Google Fiber in CB Iowa? Yes please! How about dragging that line over to Omaha while you'

Sweet little fences aren't they:-) a more serious DC would have double fences and ones a good bit taller Martesham (the UK's bell labs) once made a visiting American MCI Engineer exclaim "Fuck its a prison" when he drove up to it

Why? I don't understand why datacenters need to be hyper-secure from physical entry.

- It's far easier to get in through the electronics of a datacenter- It's far more lucrative to get in through the electronics of a datacenter (how much will you really load up in a truck during a heist?)- The only thing you'd be guaranteed is some cheap hardware you probably can't resell anyway, the servers themselves are probably encrypted.

You become famous in some way. Google tweak their algorithm so that negative and embarrassing information about you us at the top of the search, especially if you are conservative. Google bombs to the negative they are slow to fix. Your past up for anyone who searches for it, going as far back as Google could backfill it and log it.

Fools that you are for continuing to use Google. These things are not accidental,

Too much arrogance: "where the internet lives" (the internet lives even on my little server at my house)... and also "you're accessing one of the most powerful server networks in the known Universe" (we "know" a very tiny part of the universe).

Cold air comes from the floor, which stays at server height. Hot air rises. They don't cool the whole area. They contain the cool air using the plastic curtains, which then gets sucked in over to the "hot" zone by the server, thus cooling it.

Naivete? Seriously? Because you can't personally figure out what's in those pipes at a glance? They know what the pipes are for, and if they followed those standards directly, the whole room would be blue pipes and maybe some green ones. That makes their description of the pipe pictures even more relevant: the colors further tell them the purpose of the pipes, not just the contents.

Looking at the chart, and reading their descriptions, it does look like they are following insustry-standard codes for what they mention at least. The only difference is that they are painting the whole pipe, not just marking by bands.

Examples:
Picture 5 (http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/all/5)
Caption: "The blue pipes supply cold water and the red pipes return the warm water back to be cooled."
The suggested markings ("Chilled Water Supply" and "High-Temp Hot Water Return") match the col

Quite simple. They burn, as they should for attempting to try and find a fire hydrant in the cooling water / utilities room.

There are very simple rules on this. You don't go inside a burning building looking for a tap. All burning buildings have hydrants on the OUTSIDE. Something about not being able to drive the truck through the front door.

Only if it's hazardous, and if it is it should be on a hazardous material register accessible to them without going into the building.

Mind you in the grand scheme of things a chiller in a datacentre is not very dangerous at all and there's nothing in those pipes that remotely compare to what a firefighter may deal with at a chemical plant of an industrial manufacture facility.